Delusional

The first time I caught wind of the fact that people at teacher training are required to do two ninety minute classes a day, I knew immediately I would never do it.
My exact, verbatim thought was:

“I will never do that.”

As it turns out, that was false. We do not take two ninety minute classes a day. We take two “I’ll-finish-when-I’m good-and-ready-to-finish-and-making-faces-won’t-stop-my-story-any-sooner” classes a day. They can easily run up to two hours. And, hey—what the hell—as long as we’re going to be here anyway—why not be doing something while the clock ticks! Three minute eagle pose for everyone!!!

Here in Hawaii, capsules of time are not dictates but, rather, suggestions. You could hold something for thirty seconds…it’s a good round number…it fits well into the general orchestrated time table of a class…but, if inspiration hits and you want to round it up to, say, twelve minutes while you read the class four poems from your favorite native American poet and tell us a story Bikram himself has already told us four thousand times…well, okay….not a problem…namaste.

The elevators here work off much the same platform. When you press a floor you do so with a devil may care sense of urgency. Maybe it will stop on your floor, maybe it won’t. You’re welcome to ask, though, so don’t be shy…push that button!…best of luck to you!…we’ve all got our fingers crossed!
And, hey, if it decides to skip your floor or, on the opposite end, stop on every single floor between 23 and 1…well, that’s just lovely too.

It might not be so bad but that the punishment for a late sign-in is devastating.
If you’re four seconds late you have to take an additional class at 6 am…bringing your total 90 minute (or two hour classes) a day to three. Three classes a day. Unless you’re late on Saturday. On Saturday, if you’re late, you get the pleasure of doing two make up classes.

If I sound like I’m hunting for petty/luxurious afflictions in a world full of poverty/illness/and suffering, I am. A funny thing happens here around week four…
Early on, we’re all still moderate participants in our former lives. What we perceive as “problems” are primarily related to life outside of teacher training…which is healthy… because really, this training may be jam packed with frustrations…but actual problems here exist in very small denominations.
That said, now that we’re further into this, and further away from our legitimate lives, our desperate human need for conflict and misery must be fed by something in our new reality….and all we have is this…so, like the resourceful and flexible people that we are, we bend and adjust until we find things to be angry about here. At a nice hotel. On the island of Hawaii. Where we do a little yoga, learn a little dialoge, and bask in the tranquil trade winds.
Damn yoga, damn dialogue, damn tranquil wind.

The other day I was waiting for an elevator and one arrived, opened, and closed before I could get in. I was on a tight time table and needed to make sign-in. You should have seen me when those doors closed…I fell to my knees, ripped my sarong from shoulder to hem, balled up my fists and beat the floor while low gutteral moans eminated from the deepest part of my interiors. Anyone passing me in the hall would have thought I’d just received the worst news of my life. I had missed an elevator.

If our lunch break is cut short by so much as three minutes, petitions start getting drawn up and people gather in corridors mumbling about whether or not we are eligible to unionize. Someone’s cousin is married to a labor lawyer…he’ll “call her tonight!”

Stories circulate with rapid speed. And they grow. Someone might have had a sneezing episode in week one…and by week four the official story is that it was an epileptic seizure in the middle of class and “no one even offered her water!!!”
An example of the frenzied rumor mill and thought progression and how it daily grows:

The Bikram staff doesn’t want to help us.
The staff doesn’t like us.
The staff HATES us.
They HATE us and are given specific, deliberate instructions to BREAK US DOWN.
They don’t care that we don’t have kitchens.
THEY KNEW we weren’t getting kitchens.
They did it on PURPOSE.
There are empty rooms with KITCHENS and they are HIDING THEM FROM US.
And they are being MEAN to us on PURPOSE by INSTRUCTION from BIKRAM.
THAT’S THE PROCESS!!!
THE PROCESS IS TO RUIN OUR LIVES.
I REFUSE TO TRUST THE EVIL PROCESS.
WON’T DO IT.
NO WAY.

It is rabid. And it is insane.

The extent to which it becomes personal is classic.
To pull from my own juvenile existence here:
Maybe two weeks ago I said “good morning” to a staff member who responded by looking at me quickly and saying nothing back.
Two, three, four times a day I continue to bring it up. I have milked this two second interlude into a gut wrenching Greek morality play wherein I am the mythological representation of all that is good in the world and he, the teacher, is a human manifestation of pure malice. Every time I begin the now well-crafted monologue again, I pause longer and stare off into space for greater dramatic effect. When one of my 309 audience members says, “That is sooo rude. You are soooo nice." (which is exactly the response I imagine while I rehearse my story in the shower each morning) I look them in the eyes and say (with subtle, but other-wordly compassion), “you know, its really okay, he’s just not a happy person. I feel bad for him to tell you the truth…”
Which is just rich. The guy commits the heinous crime of what? Not graciously accepting my three syllable greeting at 7:30 in the morning? And now I, a woman who can be found randomly screaming at an elevator shaft, am suddenly an armchair psychologist?
I wouldn’t skip a beat if I knocked someone out of a wheelchair if it meant getting to sign-in on time. It stands to reason that maybe, just maybe, I’m not qualified to be the final word on who is, or isn’t, a “happy person”


In posture clinic, any number of criticisms from the visiting teacher/judges are met with terse, defensive versions of:
“well, maybe I could learn this if I was able to sleep more than four hours a night”
or
“do you have any idea how nerve racking it is to speak in front of people?”
To which the visiting teacher—someone who has done training, the exact same training, with the exact same sleep deprivation and fear of public speaking—just stares back, incredulous.

First of all, this is not news to anyone. Some of them finished training years ago and are still trying to catch up on their sleep…..
And, second of all, when we move our lips they don’t hear actual words….all they hear is a Don Ho song being played at a luau.
Moving this training to Honolulu was the worst thing that could have happened to the 310 of us. We qualify for no sympathy now. None.
At least twice a day we are herded into a group meeting. They’ll tell us to shower before entering the pool or pretend to have an announcement to make, but I’m positive its just a guise so someone can grab a microphone and remind us that they had to do training in Los Angeles and we get to be in Hawaii and we have no idea how lucky we are. The phrase “YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LUCKY YOU ARE” has actually overtaken “TRUST THE PROCESS” in sheer volume.

To understand the gravity of such a feat, know that the Ilikai reception staff now answers our front desk calls by saying “Hi. Front desk. Trust the process.”
If you buy a bottle of water in the general store, the will ask you for money and for trust in ‘the process’.
Try to order a pay-per-view movie on your hotel room t.v. …the options are comedies, romance, porn, and ‘trust-the-process’.
So, for an assembly of words to actually out-do ‘trust the process’ is chilling.
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LUCKY YOU ARE” pulled ahead in the race Tuesday afternoon at exactly 4:47.

I like this, though. I’ve almost exhausted my other laundry list of fake problems…this YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LUCKY YOU ARE thing will easily carry me through another week of bitching.

There is a subcategory of the miserable here. They are professionals, these kids.
They even get mad about the good stuff. They are indiscriminate in their complaining.
Every few days the instructors will organize an advanced class for themselves. We aren’t involved in this and it pushes our afternoon sign-in back fifteen minutes.
The truly dissatisfied will rally against even this. They demand explanation as to why, WHY, these people think they can take OUR fifteen minutes for a yoga class we can’t even participate in.

This is where I draw the line and get reasonable. I want to splash cold water on these people, take them by the shoulders, and scream, “Wake up, man! Get a hold of yourself! They said they want to extend our lunch and have a yoga class that we DON’T have to go to…For God’s sake, people, WE MUST NOT LOSE SIGHT OF THAT WHICH IS GOOD. I KNOW YOU’RE SLEEPY…I know…I know…shhh…shhh…its okay…shhh…”

Between our pitiful bouts of righteous indignation, we kid ourselves into thinking we have some sort of actual spine. We’re all “Look, if I need to sit down in class tonight, I will. Mark my words. I’m not intimidated by this crap…I don’t care if anyone here LIKES me”
And then class starts and none of us sit down. Because we are intimidated… and we do care…and we want to be liked…and we don’t have spines.

The most consistent, glistening, and charming expression of compassion at yoga camp is the basic kindness we all seem to manage in precisely these moments. We allow one another the tiny delusions that, good or bad, make us feel better and get us through the day.
The delusion that we are somehow in control.
The delusion that our failures are circumstantial...not of our own fault.
The delusion that, had we slept more last night, we would have been really good at delivering our dialouge.
The delusion that we “really don’t give a shit” what any of these people think of us…when it is so painfully obvious how very much we do.
Some might argue that perpetuating such fraud on each other is untruthful or negligent.
Maybe calling ourselves out on our pretenses would be better.
But from the little I know of life, I'm pretty sure we know we’re full of shit without it being said. We just do.
And, if by chance we don’t, someone wielding a microphone will surely tell us before all is said and done.
So its alright for us to handle one another gently. We’re all in boxes marked “fragile”, getting tossed around enough as it is. Every night I raise a non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated toast to my own sweet and sustaining delusions. And every morning I get up, embrace reality again, and go to class. My first class, that is. We take two each day here.